


Pen and Paper

by cuneifire (orphan_account)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Art, Artists, Book 5: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Book 6: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, M/M, slight AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-02 20:57:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18818881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/cuneifire
Summary: Somehow, Malfoy becomes the main subject of his sixth year sketchbook.





	Pen and Paper

He hadn't meant to start drawing Malfoy, it just sort of happened. 

Good subjects are hard to find. People are rarely in the habit of sitting perfectly still. Harry knows this from experience- Ron can barely manage two minutes, and that’s after years of attempts. And Hermione is only still when she’s reading a book. Which is why most of Harry’s cheap artbook is just sketches, pencil and paper- Seamus smiling with wild, exaggerated movements, Ron’s hand poised as over the piece which will lead him to a winning move in chess, Hermione laughing at something Ron said (that one Ron had stolen from him, and Harry had never asked for it back, just smiled in a way that made Ron’s ears go red.) The only subjects that were more than sketches were the landscapes- the Hogwarts castle, the Forbidden Forest, the lake- and Harry himself. He’d had plenty of time to learn how to sit still, locked up in his cupboard with only a dim light bulb and a whittled down pencil and scrap paper. 

But Malfoy is different than his usual subjects. He’s  _ poised,  _ like he’s spent his whole life knowing how to stand perfectly still. He smirks offhandedly, even when it’s just a teacher lecturing them with no regard to him. His eyes are coruscating, silver that goes incredibly well with Slytherin green and the school’s dark robes. It makes Harry wish he could get away with bringing coloured pencils to class, but a pencil is already pushing it, really, because there’s no real reason for him to have random Muggle art supplies on hand if he’s supposed to be paying any sort of attention. 

But he takes the pencil with him anyways, drawing in the margins of his worksheets. At first it’s just anything that comes to mind, really- Professor Flitwick's hand as he snaps a stick against the chalkboard, the edge of Snape’s cauldron, gleaming in the low lit light, Hermione studiously taking notes during the History of Magic. He doesn’t have much spare time to draw nowadays, what with the Order and all- but he tries, even at the expense of his grades, because some things are just too important to let go. 

But the more he drew, he kept finding his eyes drifting to Malfoy. Admittedly Malfoy was a good subject, and one of the only people in the school who could sit still for more than a handful of minutes, but still- it was bizarre. Harry would find himself constantly looking to capture the particular glimmer in his eyes, the shadows as he tilted his head, the precise mix of condescension and viciousness that came to his expression when he smirked. 

The more he drew, the easier he found it to understand Malfoy. As fifth year passed into sixth, he learned to recognize his expressions with ease- which proved handy, as he comes to the realisation that for all Malfoy’s smug superiority- and there’s a lot of it- behind that, there’s an ocean of fear. 

When Malfoy breaks his nose, Harry laughs, and wonders if it’d be fun to draw him covered in blood. He does, in fact, try. The boy in the drawing looks like he’s drowning, and Harry tries not to draw parallels. 

He brings his sketchbook to the Great Hall to draw during dinner, when he doesn’t feel like eating- everything’s moving too fast, he’s too nervous to eat, he  _ has  _ to catch Malfoy, he knows he’s behind it. 

So he draws, sneaking fast glances at Malfoy and making sharp, swift lines under the table while pretending to be entranced by a hefty serving of salad and ham. Malfoy looks worse and worse these days, the bags under his eyes dark, his skin a sallow pallor, always sneering. Harry tries to capture that. 

“Harry?” He whips his gaze to see Hermione peering curiously over his shoulder. “What are you-” She stops when she sees his subject. “Oh.” Her voice has gone soft. “Harry, you know-” 

Harry rolls his eyes. “Obsessed with Malfoy. Got the picture, Hermione.” 

Hermione looks like she wants to say something else, but Harry shuts his sketchbook before she can form the thought. 

Malfoy soon becomes his main subject; once when he’s doing hand references, he finds that his drawings all come out more elegant, the fingers longer over a quill. He’ll trace his hand over the Mauraders’ map, the dot that reads  _ Draco Malfoy,  _ close his eyes and try to picture what on earth he could be doing there. He finds no answers. 

But he finds plenty to draw. 

His newest sketchbook goes faster than ever before, in spite of his lack of time. It’s almost completed, actually, when he’s walking from Potions, and trips. 

His hands hit the pavement with a dulled spike of pain, and he looks up to see Malfoy sneering at him. But it’s the same as all his other expressions- clouded with fear. His hands are trembling- Harry had caught onto that two months in, and drawing him became even more of a challenge after that. 

Malfoy takes no note of this as he lifts his chin. “Potter,” He hisses, barely deigning him a glance, “Care to tell me why precisely you’ve been doing so wonderfully in  _ Potions  _ this year?” 

“Offended that I’m better than you at everything?” Harry says, and the words taste like bile and he says them before he thinks. He doesn’t know why Malfoy always does-  _ this-  _ to him. Grabs the worse parts of him by the tailcoats and shoves them into a spotlight, highlights them for all to see.

Malfoy looks unaffected, but he gives it away with the way his lips twitch. “As if.” He says, and Harry’s pretty sure he doesn’t imagine the warble in his voice as he leans down and snatches up a book. 

“Now, whatever technique you’ve been employing to cheat has obviously been very fruitful. I think I’ll be-” 

His eyes go wide as he looks through Harry’s sketchbook, barely staring in on a “Didn’t know you were going for modern art, Potter-” before he flips the page. He must see some of Harry’s sketches of him.

“Potter-” He says, looking over the cover of the book and his eyes meet Harry’s. “What on  _ earth- _ ” And Harry thinks he’s trying to be disgusted, but he’s failing, because his lips aren’t twitching and his eyes haven’t narrowed, and his hands are still trembling, whereas anger usually calms him. He looks- shocked, surprised, and with some other expression Harry’s never seen on his face. 

“What is this?” His voice has dropped to little above a whisper, and Harry almost feels like smiling. 

“You’re more afraid than you pretend to be, Draco.” Is what he says, and he barely catches the softening of Draco’s look before he turns on his heel and  _ runs. _

They never talk about it again. Draco never brings it up, and Harry never had the chance to. 


End file.
